Author's posts
3 ways this physician experiences and creates joy
At the start of this year, I decided to go on a “joy quest.” Too often, we rush from one mental worry to the next and don’t take the time to notice, experience, and create the joy that’s either already there or that can be added…
How physicians can persevere through their current and future challenges
The end is in sight, but there are still months to go. How can we persevere when our strength has been collectively sapped over the last year, and our sense of grief at what has been lost will persist even when isolation and distancing are over? To ans…
Go gentle into that good night
This piece is a retelling of the poem “Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas. As an emergency physician who has borne witness to suffering and death, I have felt the futility and bravery of fighting against the dying of the light among…
How to (almost) never have a bad shift
Walking through the sliding glass doors at 10:55 p.m. on a Monday, I found myself wondering if it would be a good shift or a bad shift. In emergency medicine, a “good shift” has to strike many delicate balances. It can’t be too busy, but it also can’t …
Take yourself as you know you can be: a message from residency educator
To the residents graduating in 2020 and joining us in the ranks as physicians, from a residency educator: Victor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist and holocaust survivor. He was paraphrasing Goethe when he said: “If you take a man as he is, you make …
How to rekindle your love of medicine
Recently, thousands of new residency and fellowship graduates have earned their wings and will be, mostly metaphorically, hanging out their shingles. Sadly, though, as the excitement of finally finishing training after decades of schooling wears off, e…
